Instructions to Authors

The Journal of Pediatric Research is an official peer-reviewed publication of Ege University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics and Ege Children’s Foundation. This publication organ is responsible for the issue of unique clinical and laboratory research papers, case reports, reviews directly or indirectly related to children’s health and diseases. The publication language of the journal is English.

The Journal of Pediatric Research does not charge any article submission or processing charges.

The abbreviation of The Journal of Pediatric Research is JPR, however, it should be denoted as J Pediatr Res when referenced. In the international index and database, the name of the journal has been registered as The Journal of Pediatric Research and abbreviated as J Pediatr Res.

In case of major language revision you can apply to our English Language consultant on editing service. The cost of service is 100 TL per 1000 words. Please transfer the amount to the following bank account and contact the editorial office for further procedures.

A manuscript will be considered only with the understanding that it is an original contribution that has not been published elsewhere. All manuscripts submitted to the journal for publication are peer-reviewed. Authors shall be informed within a period of 8 weeks about the process. Upon review, those manuscripts, which are accepted, shall be published in the journal and issued on the http://www.jpedres.org official internet address.

The scientific and ethical liability of the manuscripts belongs to the authors and the copyright of the manuscripts belongs to the JPR. Authors are responsible for the contents of the manuscript and accuracy of the references. All manuscripts submitted for publication must be accompanied by the Copyright Transfer Form [copyright transfer]. Once this form, signed by all the authors, has been submitted, it is understood that neither the manuscript nor the data it contains have been submitted elsewhere or previously published and authors declare the statement of scientific contributions and responsibilities of all authors.

All manuscripts submitted to the The Journal of Pediatric Research are screened for plagiarism using the ‘iThenticate’ software. Results indicating plagiarism may result in manuscripts being returned or rejected.

Experimental, clinical and drug studies requiring approval by an ethics committee must be submitted to The Journal of Pediatric Research with an ethics committee approval report confirming that the study was conducted in accordance with international agreements and the Declaration of Helsinki (revised 2013) (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/). The approval of the ethics committee and the fact that informed consent was given by the patients should be indicated in the Materials and Methods section. In experimental animal studies, the authors should indicate that the procedures followed were in accordance with animal rights as per the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (http://oacu.od.nih.gov/regs/guide/guide.pdf) and they should obtain animal ethics committee approval.

Authors must provide disclosure/acknowledgment of financial or material support, if any was received, for the current study.

If the article includes any direct or indirect commercial links or if any institution provided material support to the study, authors must state in the cover letter that they have no relationship with the commercial product, drug, pharmaceutical company, etc. concerned; or specify the type of relationship (consultant, other agreements), if any.

Authors must provide a statement on the absence of conflicts of interest among the authors and provide authorship contributions.

The Journal of Pediatric Research is an independent international journal based on double-blind peer-review principles. The manuscript is assigned to the Editor-in-Chief, who reviews the manuscript and makes an initial decision based on manuscript quality and editorial priorities. Manuscripts that pass initial evaluation are sent for external peer review, and the Editor-in-Chief assigns an Associate Editor. The Associate Editor sends the manuscript to reviewers (internal and/or external reviewers). The reviewers must review the manuscript within 21 days. The Associate Editor recommends a decision based on the reviewers’ recommendations and returns the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief makes a final decision based on editorial priorities, manuscript quality, and reviewer recommendations. If there are any conflicting recommendations from reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief can assign a new reviewer.

The scientific board guiding the selection of the papers to be published in the Journal consists of elected experts of the Journal and if necessary, selected from national and international authorities. The Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, biostatistics expert and English language consultant may make minor corrections to accepted manuscripts that do not change the main text of the paper.

In case of any suspicion or claim regarding scientific shortcomings or ethical infringement, the Journal reserves the right to submit the manuscript to the supporting institutions or other authorities for investigation. The Journal accepts the responsibility of initiating action but does not undertake any responsibility for an actual investigation or any power of decision.

The Editorial Policies and General Guidelines for manuscript preparation specified below are based on “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations)” by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2016, archived at http://www.icmje.org/).

Preparation of research articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses must comply with study design guidelines:

The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) number of the correspondence author should be provided while sending the manuscript. A free registration can be created at http://orcid.org.

Format: Unique research papers cover clinical research, observational studies, novel techniques, and experimental and laboratory studies. Unique research papers shall consist of a heading, abstract, keywords related to the main topic of the paper, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, bibliography, tables and figures. Manuscripts should be prepared using 12 pt “Times New Roman” and 1.5 line spacing. The text shall not exceed 2500 words. Case reports must contain rare cases or those that are unique in diagnosis and treatment, those which contribute to current knowledge and provide educational information, along with the introduction, case reporting and discussion sections. The whole text must not exceed 1500 words. Reviews are texts in which a current subject is examined independently, with reference to scientific literature. The whole text must not exceed 18 A4 paper sheets. Letters to the Editor must be manuscripts, which do not exceed 1000 words, with reference to scientific literature, and those written in response to issued literature or those, which include development in the field of pediatrics. These manuscripts do not contain an abstract. The number of references is limited to 5.

Abbreviations: Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter. Internationally accepted abbreviations should be used; refer to scientific writing guides as necessary.

Cover letter: The cover letter should include statements about manuscript type, single-journal submission affirmation, conflict of interest statement, sources of outside funding, equipment (if applicable), approval of language for articles in English and approval of statistical analysis for original research articles.

REFERENCES

Authors are solely responsible for the accuracy of all references.

In-text citations: References shall be listed as the below formats on a separate page according to their sequence within the text and referred to within the text in parentheses.

Presentations presented in congresses, unpublished manuscripts, theses, Internet addresses, and personal interviews or experiences should not be indicated as references. If such references are used, they should be indicated in parentheses at the end of the relevant sentence in the text, without reference number and written in full, in order to clarify their nature.

References section: All author names shall be stated within all references. References shall be listed as the below formats on a separate page according to their sequence within the text and referred to within the text in parentheses. However, in studies where author numbers exceed 6, names of the first 3 authors shall be stated;“et al.” additions shall be made to the list of authors in English references, respectively. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in the Index Medicus.

Reference Format

Journal: Last name(s) of the author(s) and initials, article title, publication title and its original abbreviation, publication date, volume, the inclusive page numbers.

TABLES, GRAPHICS, FIGURES, AND IMAGES

All visual materials together with their legends should be located on separate pages that follow the main text. Original documents such as films, ECG records must not be delivered. All cost related to colored printouts shall be covered by the authors’ own expenses.

Images: Images (pictures) should be numbered and include a brief title. Permission to reproduce pictures that were published elsewhere must be included. All pictures should be of the highest quality possible, in JPEG format, and at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Tables, Graphics, Figures: All tables, graphics or figures should be enumerated according to their sequence within the text and a brief descriptive caption should be written. Tables shall be numbered by Roman numerals (I, II) according to their sequence, and shall include a heading. Figures shall be numbered by Arabic numerals (1,2) according to their sequence. Any abbreviations used should be defined in the accompanying legend. Tables in particular should be explanatory and facilitate readers’ understanding of the manuscript, and should not repeat data presented in the main text. A maximum of 2 figures or photographs shall be added to case reports.

BIOSTATISTICS

To ensure controllability of the research findings, the study design, study sample, and the methodological approaches and applications should be explained and their sources should be presented.

The “p” value defined as the limit of significance along with appropriate indicators of measurement error and uncertainty (confidence interval, etc.) should be specified. Statistical terms, abbreviations and symbols used in the article should be described and the software used should be defined.

Statistical terminology (random, significant, correlation, etc.) should not be used in non-statistical contexts.

All results of data and analysis should be presented in the Results section as tables, figures and graphics; biostatistical methods used and application details should be presented in the Materials and Methods section or under a separate title.

MANUSCRIPT TYPES

Original Articles

Unique research papers cover clinical research, observational studies, novel techniques, and experimental and laboratory studies. Unique research papers shall consist of a heading, abstract, keywords related to the main topic of the paper, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, bibliography, tables and figures. The text shall not exceed 2500 words. Case reports must contain rare cases or those that are unique in diagnosis and treatment, those which contribute to current knowledge and provide educational information, along with the introduction, case reporting and discussion sections. The whole text must not exceed 1500 words. Reviews are texts in which a current subject is examined independently, with reference to scientific literature. The whole text must not exceed 18 A4 paper sheets. Letters to the Editor must be manuscripts, which do not exceed 1000 words, with reference to scientific literature, and those written in response to issued literature or those, which include development in the field of pediatrics. These manuscripts do not contain an abstract. The number of references is limited to 5.

Title Page: This page should include the title of the manuscript, short title, name(s) of the authors and author information. The following descriptions should be stated in the given order:

1. Title of the manuscript as concise and explanatory as possible, including no abbreviations, up to 135 characters 2. Short title up to 60 characters 3. Name(s) and surname(s) of the author(s) (without abbreviations and academic titles) and affiliations 4. Name, address, e-mail, phone and fax number of the corresponding author 5. The place and date of scientific meeting in which the manuscript was presented and its abstract published in the abstract book, if applicable

Abstract: A summary of the manuscript should be written in English. References should not be cited in the abstract. Use of abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible; if any abbreviations are used, they must be taken into consideration independently of the abbreviations used in the text.

For original articles, the structured abstract should include the following sub-headings:

Aim: The aim of the study should be clearly stated.

Materials and Methods: The study and standard criteria used should be defined; it should also be indicated whether the study is randomized or not, whether it is retrospective or prospective, and the statistical methods applied should be indicated, if applicable.

Results: The detailed results of the study should be given and the statistical significance level should be indicated.

Conclusion: Should summarize the results of the study, the clinical applicability of the results should be defined, and the favorable and unfavorable aspects should be declared.

Keywords: A list of minimum 3, but no more than 5 key words must follow the abstract. Key words in English should be consistent with “Medical Subject Headings (MESH)” (www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).

Original research articles should have the following sections:

Introduction: Should consist of a brief explanation of the topic and indicate the objective of the study, supported by information from the literature.

Materials and Methods: The study plan should be clearly described, indicating whether the study is randomized or not, whether it is retrospective or prospective, the number of trials, the characteristics, and the statistical methods used.

Results: The results of the study should be stated, with tables/figures given in numerical order; the results should be evaluated according to the statistical analysis methods applied. See General Guidelines for details about the preparation of visual material.

Discussion: The study results should be discussed in terms of their favorable and unfavorable aspects and they should be compared with the literature. The conclusion of the study should be highlighted.

Study Limitations: Limitations of the study should be discussed. In addition, an evaluation of the implications of the obtained findings/results for future research should be outlined.

Conclusion: The conclusion of the study should be highlighted.

Acknowledgements: Any technical or financial support or editorial contributions (statistical analysis, English evaluation) towards the study should appear at the end of the article.

References: Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. See General Guidelines for details about the usage and formatting required.

Case Reports

Case reports should present cases which are rarely seen, feature novelty in diagnosis and treatment, and contribute to our current knowledge. The first page should include the title in English, an unstructured summary not exceeding 50 words, and key words. The main text should consist of introduction, case report, discussion and references. The entire text should not exceed 1500 words (A4, formatted as specified above). A maximum of 10 references shall be used in case reports.

Review Articles

Review articles can address any aspect of clinical or laboratory pediatry. Review articles must provide critical analyses of contemporary evidence and provide directions for future research. The journal only accepts and publishes invited reviews. Before sending a review, discussion with the editor is recommended.

Reviews articles analyze topics in depth, independently and objectively. The first chapter should include the title in English, an unstructured summary and key words. Source of all citations should be indicated. The entire text should not exceed 18 pages (A4, formatted as specified above

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor should be short commentaries related to current developments in pediatrics and their scientific and social aspects, or may be submitted to ask questions or offer further contributions in response to work that has been published in the Journal. Letters do not include a title or an abstract; they should not exceed 1.000 words and can have up to 5 references.

COMMERCIALIZATION

Commercialization issues shall be discussed with the editor. It is possible to include an advertisement on the outer and inner pages of the journal.

COPYRIGHT

All copyright of the journal belongs to the related institutions.

The Journal of Pediatric Research is the publication organ of Ege University Faculty of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, supported by Ege Children’s Foundation (EÇV).